Namco announces the first Elden Ring expansion is in development

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Publisher Namco Bandai has officially announced the first expansion content for Elden Ring, just over a year after the game’s initial release earned it Ars’ 2022 Game of the Year honors. “Shadow of the Erdtree” is “currently in development,” according to a tweet from the game’s official account, and promises “new adventure in the Lands Between.”

While the announcement is extremely light on details, we do get a single image of what looks like a long-haired woman on horseback, looking over a misty and wheat-filled moor with a few ruined arches poking up here and there. There’s already some rampant speculation that this figure is Miquella, the previously unseen twin of the infamous and frustratingly difficult Elden Ring boss Malenia.

Elden Ring became an immediate best-seller after its launch last February, selling 12 million copies in just 17 days, according to Namco Bandai. The publisher recently announced that the game had surpassed 20 million sales in its first year, putting it in the rarefied realm of mega-sellers like Red Dead Redemption 2 and the Grand Theft Auto series.